When Richard Nixon became the first and only president to resign the Oval Office, the perches of two central Illinois lawmakers gave them virtually one-of-a-kind seats to the unfolding of history.

The Republican duo — both of whom considered themselves allies of Nixon — had vastly different perches 40 years ago during the Watergate scandal, though.

Peoria’s Rep. Bob Michel was a growing power in the House and was among a handful of members of Congress who held a tearful meeting with Nixon just minutes before his televised resignation speech. Moline’s Rep. Tom Railsback was a young up-and-comer on the House Judiciary Committee who drew notice as he and a centrist coalition worked to craft the articles of impeachment that committee forwarded to the full House on a bipartisan vote — a decision that steered the president’s choice to quit.

Today, each describes the protracted Watergate affair and presidential resignation as one of their toughest moments in public life.

“The whole thing was the most difficult legislative experience by far of my life,” Railsback said from his Idaho home.

“That was a very traumatic thing for me,” Michel agreed last week from his Washington, D.C., office.

For Michel the toughest and most memorable time came at the end.

“The president had asked me to come up to the Cabinet Room that night before he resigned,” he said, describing an intimate meeting of Nixon and a small, bipartisan group of congressmen and senators. “That was a very moving thing.”

Moments into the meeting, Michel says he realized he was living through a rare historical moment and took a sheet of paper out of his suit jacket pocket “and scratched out a few notes.”

That handwritten account of the meeting, along with a version dictated the next morning to his secretary, are in the care of the Dirksen Congressional Center in Pekin, and are also available online as part of a file detailing the correspondence between Michel and Nixon from the mid-1950s through the former president’s funeral.

Michel titled it “A roomful of tearful men,” and it details some of Nixon’s last moments before going on camera, from detailing how the embattled leader insisted “it’s not my nature to quit” and insisted his choice to resign was to protect the presidency and keep the nation’s leadership focused. He thanked them for their aid, their counsel and their personal friendship.

“I want to say most of all I appreciate your friendship more than ever and I hope you won’t feel I have let you down,” Michel records Nixon as saying shortly before breaking down, losing his composure and leaving the men behind to face the TV cameras.

Page 2 of 3 - “It was a very, very moving night,” Michel said again last week. “There were some tears shed that night. People who’d known him as I did for a number of years, felt strongly about him, my gosh, we felt bad.”

For Railsback, the stress and emotions began even earlier.

While most of the attention from history goes to the Senate committee chaired by North Carolina’s Sam Ervin and its televised hearings into the break-in and subsequent cover-up, members of the House Judiciary Committee began work of their own late in 1973 that would gradually move toward a vote on articles of impeachment the following summer.

As a key member of the committee, and a moderate, Railsback was especially in the public eye.

“From that time on, from the fall of ’73, our lives were changed,” he said. “... When I went home for Christmas in 1973, I was followed home by Sam Donaldson of ABC News” along with a reporter from CBS News. NBC soon called, too.

“Everywhere I went, everybody I spoke to ... when I spoke to my daughter’s grade school class, they filmed my life,” he remembers, confessing that he didn’t quite know what to make of all the attention.

That life in front of the cameras became even more serious as more and more revelations came out, including the ultimate release of audiotapes from Oval Office meetings.

“Everybody knew that it was a very grave matter when some of these tapes came out,” Railsback said. “... I think the whole country was kind of shocked and had become aware that this was indeed a very serious matter.”

Nixon was a complex and controversial character, in the country and even in his own party. But he had been a fixture in American politics since the end of World War II and had many loyalists, especially in the GOP.

Nevertheless, once those tapes were heard, “some of the Republicans were really questioning the president’s conduct,” Railsback said. “... The tapes were really very key to the whole investigation. We knew at the time they went public there were at least seven Republicans out of 17 who thought there was enough evidence to send to the Senate.”

The tapes indeed were a turning point, with the final release of information showing active involvement in the cover-up — previously withheld by Nixon — “the last straw” according to Michel in an early August edition of the (Peoria) Journal Star. “Some of us have been had.”

Page 3 of 3 - As Railsback remembered, though, there were plenty of constituents and even some Journal Star editors that had little tolerance for those who didn’t support Nixon, and the criticism was sometimes tough to take.

A July 31, 1974, editorial headlined “Tom Railsback Dead Duck” castigated Railsback for his willingness to vote in committee for articles of impeachment against Nixon, suggesting Republican voters could sit on their hands rather than vote for his re-election. Days later, a reader from Creve Coeur compared Railsback to Pontius Pilate in a letter to the editor and said the lawmaker was “about as popular as a hair in a bowl of soup with the real Americans in this land.”

Much is made of the modern day being an era of incivility and anything-goes Internet commentary, but the attacks were both pointed and indicative of violence during the impeachment debate. University of Texas professor Lewis Gould reviewed Railsback’s correspondence files kept at Western Illinois University and spoke last October there about the backlash against him. One constituent in Henderson County was blunt, saying “they should kill the s.o.b. He’s a dog as far as I’m concerned.”

Another called him “a cancer” on the GOP.

The lawmaker was grateful for defenders, though. On his first return to the district, a visit to the Quad Cities on Aug. 3, he was greeted with a standing ovation by the Chamber of Commerce and the board chairman of Deere & Co.

The truth is that neither man was anti-Nixon. He campaigned in both their districts for them in the 1960s. Railsback to this day praises him as a moderate Republican, and both he and Michel credit him with opening the door for relations with China.

Indeed, in Michel’s assessment the country owes Nixon far more credit for his foreign policy achievements — and domestic accomplishments — that are too often overshadowed by Watergate.

“When I’m ranking the presidents, I just don’t have the same view of people who just outright condemn Nixon,” he said. “I just have to keep thinking of all the good things he did.”

Michel invited the president back several times to speak to House Republicans during his stint as their leader, and each time “it was packed. People all wanted to hear what he had to say.”

To this day, Michel says, “I still have that reservoir of feeling for that fellow who was once my friend.”